Comment by stupidcar
9 years ago
He may well be out of touch, but at least Musk's suggesting a real solution to current transit problems, even if it's impractical. On the other hand, whenever I read stuff by politicians and engineers with real knowledge and influence in this field, I'm astonished by the total lack of vision.
Even in London, where you have a major, successful transport engineering project (Crossrail) completing, and an entire city dependency on, and supportive of, public transport, you only hear the most anemic plans for future expansion.
For example, TFL is pushing a "New Tube For London" plan that consists of little more than trivial improvements. Some new trains, platform edge doors, etc., scheduled to be delivered in 2050 or so. But absolutely nothing with real ambition, like entirely new lines, that would actually solve London's insane congestion problems.
The problem is not that they cannot imagine the concept of adding new lines, it's just that the costs, both monetarily and politically for doing so, are enormous in the Western world. The eminent domain, permitting, and labor issues around these things paralyzes the development of cities, especially in the United States.
If you want to see ambition in infrastructure, check out China. Being a technocracy bent on having world-class infrastructure, combined with the ability to remove people from their homes for the greater good with little repercussion, they've built some of the most thorough infrastructural improvements ever seen on the planet. For instance, the first line of the Shanghai Metro was opened in 1993; today, it is the longest metro in the world, with 14 lines. And this rapid growth can be seen not just in the megacities like Shanghai, but in countless smaller ones throughout the country—not to mention their incredible construction of their thorough long distance high speed rail network. And on top of that, since their system is so modern, the trains are a hell of a lot safer and more reliable than any piece of infrastructure in the USA.
I think they've made mistakes with how car-oriented the streetscapes are, the generic architectural styles throughout that country, overbuilding before demand arises, and a lack of mixed-use neighborhood zoning, amongst other things; but when it comes to imagining an integrated, efficient commuter rail network, they've killed it.
> the ability to remove people from their homes for the greater good with little repercussion
I think you underestimate how poorly compensated the relocated people are. Unless it's an outcome of "Weird China" reporting, which is very possible, I've seen plenty of reports of people being forced out of their houses in exchange for flats with smaller floor space and property in an inferior location.
I'm not saying what Chinese infrastructure officials isn't impressive. I'm just saying it has massive costs for the people being displaced.
I think you are in violent agreement with the parent post: "ability to remove people ... with little repercussion" literally means: they (authorities) can order people move, and it costs them (authorities) little or nothing at all.
It costs the moved people a great deal, but the government doesn't care.
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What? TfL has no ambitions? The crossrail is the biggest construction project in the whole Europe, and it is still not finished and they are already planning for the crossrail 2 that will be started in the next 3-4 years. These are huge projects, much more important than Musk proposal that in London would have been simply ridiculous given that the crossrail alone will move 200 million people per year. If they went for the proposal discussed here instead London congestion would have exploded given the abismally low capacity of this boring company project.
Opening new lines, like building new roads, might hurt everything due to induced demand.
You can reduce demand by not needing everyone to go the same place every day. Why does everyone have to work in London and why don't they already live where they work?
Induced demand means people are now able to practically get places when they couldn't before. It doesn't mean "hurt everything."
And more people moving more places means more growth, probably. If everyone stayed at home not much would get done.
> He may well be out of touch, but at least Musk's suggesting a real solution to current transit problems, even if it's impractical.
He's proposing the transportation equivalent of a personal computer with perfect security, completely crash free, 1000x faster than current PCs that cost lesss tha. We have today. It's not impractical, it's laughable.
> On the other hand, whenever I read stuff by politicians and engineers with real knowledge and influence in this field, I'm astonished by the total lack of vision.
If you want to see total vision, come to a Transportation Research Board annual meeting. Or an APTA annual meeting. Visions are out there. The political support is not.
Visions have to be shared with the public, make people excited about them, to get politicians to support them
paralysis via NIMBY is the key problem in the US. many urbanists would be happy to grid every city with subways. we talk about it, wistfully.
but we don't have the political leverage today, and the little we have is with the Democrats, not the Republicans.
"real solution" =! "it's impractical"
Decide which one is it.